History of Apple iPhone Hardware

Apple does not make an iPhone with internal wireless charging support. Scotty of Strange Parts found a guy in China who developed a kit to add wireless charging capability inside an iPhone 7. It is a slim circuit including Wireless Charging antenna and a connector which slips into an iPhone 7 connector. It requires replacing the back, so there is a port-hole through which wireless charging signals can get into the phone.

The video attached here is a fascinating look at not only getting into an iPhone 7 and making modifications, but the hardware development environment in the Chinese electronics markets. We get to see Scotty taking apart and reassembling an iPhone 7 several times, testing and debugging, and finally getting the thing to work. Plus, we get to see Scotty negotiating with Chinese hardware developers.

The big result is that Scotty is making available kits at http://strangeparts.com/wireless

Scotty of Strange Parts has published several in-depth videos on building an iPhone, and building custom iPhones including adding a headphone jack to an iPhone 7. In this video he walks us through the parts required to build an iPhone from parts. This is not just the logic board, screen, battery, and case, but all the parts, as well as hints on which parts to be extra careful aboutl

Apple really screwed up the iPhone design with the iPhone 7 by not putting in a headphone jack. I don't care about their prescriptive ideas about this, we need a headphone jack dammit. This video is from the guy who built his own iPhone from spare parts he bought in Shenzen China. For this video, he'd bought an iPhone 7 in order to record better videos and found himself really wanting a headphone jack. So, he decided to launch into adding such a jack, knowing there are millions of others around the world chafing at Apple's preconcieved notions and wanting a headphone jack on their iPhone 7.

The process took 17 weeks of trial and error. He started with noting there's an empty space where the headphone jack belongs, and that it'd be vaguely possible to add hardware into that space. What took the 17 weeks is designing a custom circuit, on a flexible substrate, learning to solder flexible circuits and work under a microscope, and to learn how to assemble the result without breaking the parts. That last bit was expensive due to the large number of expensive parts he broke. But, he came out the end with success and a vow to release the design files to the public via his website, and a strong plea to Apple to add a dang headphone jack to the iPhone 8.